Table Of ContentRavish Preshant Yashraj Mehairjan
Risk-Based
Maintenance
for Electricity
Network
Organizations
Risk-Based Maintenance for Electricity Network
Organizations
Ravish Preshant Yashraj Mehairjan
Risk-Based Maintenance
for Electricity Network
Organizations
123
RavishPreshant YashrajMehairjan
Rotterdam
TheNetherlands
ISBN978-3-319-49234-6 ISBN978-3-319-49235-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49235-3
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016957860
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I dedicate this work to my loving parents
Samuel Mehairjan & Chandra-Devi Kalpoe
Mehairjan and to the great colleagues at
Delft University of Technology and Stedin
Distribution Network Operator.
Foreword
Electricity and its related electricity transmission and distribution systems are
crucial elements in today’s society. We are depending on these systems more than
mostofusareawareof.Butincaseofanoutage,we(oratleast,mostpeople)start
to realise how important electricity is in our daily life. It is not only our personal
environment that undergoes the impact of such an outage (with our many home
devices), but also larger outages will significantly undermine the functionality of
hospitals, airports, railways, etc. And long duration outages of a couple of days or
longer can even become very frightening. For example, in the Netherlands,
pumpingstationsbringwaterfromlowerareasbacktotheriversandifthesestartto
fail(forexample,themainDutchairportSchipholislocatedinanareawhichisup
to five meters below sea level!).
With that, network owners are of course working on ways to keep or get their
electricitynetworkreliableandifanoutagehappens,tobeabletorerouteelectricity
quickly, in order to reduce the outage time.
Working in an environment where the latest tools are being developed for
network diagnostics and monitoring,I experienced that effective tools toguardthe
network’sconditionarewell receivedbynetworkowners. But thatisnormallythe
caseatanoperationallevelonly.Inordertogetsucheffectivetoolsbeingaccepted
and implemented throughout the network owner’s maintenance organisation
(including at strategic and tactic levels), patience in needed. That is because the
maintenance organisation of a network owner is (often) much focused on making
present ways of working as effective as possible. And new ideas, new ways of
working, are therefore seen with some scepticism. Fully understandable when it is
toavoidtofollowahype,whichintheendisanemptybox.Butwhenitisjustthe
network owner’s maintenance organisation preventing the introduction of better
solutions to guard the network, then there is room for an improvement.
And then there is Ravish Mehairjan’s book. In his book, Ravish shows that
networkownerscanbewellpreparedfortheimplementationofsuccessfulguarding
tools for their networks. But his book goes wider. He recommends to create a
vii
viii Foreword
multidisciplinary set-up for maintenance management. It is a set-up where
handshakes are made between strategic, tactical and operational levels.
Moreover,maintenancemanagement should notjust have a technicalapproach,
but should as well incorporate risk-based thinking and other non-technical organ-
isation elements. And Ravish shows how this can be achieved and how a network
owner can profit from it.
With that Ravish is touching a crucial element in the electricity network’s
organisation, once implemented, making it better prepared for the future. And that
is needed. Not only because we are depending on electricity a lot, as I said in the
start of my foreword. Also not only because parts of the network are getting quite
oldandmightneedspecialtreatment.Butwearealsofacingcrucialchallengesasa
result of the emerging renewable energy sources and related decentralised power
generation, all counting on a reliable electricity network.
Forallthesereasons,IwarmlywelcomeandrecommendRavish’book.Notonly
enjoy it, but use it!
Arnhem, The Netherlands Prof. Dr. Ir. Fred Steennis
October 2016 DNV GL and TU/e
Preface
This book is based on a Ph.D. research that has been conducted at the Delft
UniversityofTechnologyintheNetherlandsincollaborationwithDutchElectricity
&GasDistributionNetworkOperator,Stedin.Thisbookwaswrittenasaresultof
wider interest that was shown by different industry groups on this topic after its
public defence. This inspired the author to modify and publish a practical version
of the research for a greater international audience. Therefore, the content of this
bookisintendedfor adouble audience,ontheone handfor those interestedinthe
organisational and management aspects of maintenance. On the other hand for
thoseinterestedinpractical-developedmethodsforapplyingmaintenanceconcepts
suchasreliability-centredmaintenance(RCM) withintheriskmanagementregime
of the organisation, statistical tools for predicting failure behaviour and the
upcoming role of condition monitoring, hence a more concept- and a
technology-oriented aspects of maintenance. The intent has been to provide the
reader with an in-depth treatment but without excessive specialisation. Because
of the research nature of the book and in order to avoid a purely qualitative
treatment, some numerical and analytical methods together with real case studies
are discussed.
The author spent about four years writing the thesis that also resulted in this
book. The material in this book evolved from a large number of practical asset
managementandacademicengagementsbetweentheauthorandresearchers,utility
engineers, managers and C-level decision-makers. Hopefully, this collaborative
processthattookplaceovertheyearshasresultedinabookthatisbothinteresting
andpracticalforresearchers,engineers,managersandeducatorsinthefieldofasset
maintenance management.
The author wishes to the many people that have, directly and indirectly, helped
and supported this research process. Specifically, the author would like to thank
Stedin(Dutch DistributionNetworkOperator)andDelft UniversityofTechnology
in the Netherlands for the great collaboration, support and research funds. The
author would also like to that Springer for supporting the preparation of this book
ix
x Preface
and the pleasant cooperation. Last but not least, the author would like to offer a
special thanks to his families and friends for their invaluable inspiration and
support.
Presently, the maintenance of assets is widely undergoing changes towards
well-founded forms of maintenance management in infrastructure utilities such as
electricity,gasandwater.Thesearemainlydrivenagainstthebackdropofstringent
regulatoryregimes,ageingassetbase,increasedcustomerdemandsandconstrained
financing. Therefore, it becomes imperative for infrastructure utilities to strive
towards moreeffectiveandefficientoperation andmaintenanceapproaches.Inthis
light,newassetmanagementapproachessuchasriskmanagementaregainingmore
interestworldwide.Inthisresearch,thefocushasbeenonthefurtherdevelopmentof
maintenance management in electricity network organisations. It covers the devel-
opment and practical application of enabling factors for maintenance management
suchasorganisationcapabilitiesandmaturitylevels,structuredandcomprehensive
frameworks for assessing maintenance policies and decision-making support tools
and technologies. Thus, an integral, multidisciplinary approach towards mainte-
nancemanagementneedstobeestablished,whichisachallengethathasbeentaken
up inthis thesis for electricity network companies.
Well-founded and effective maintenance management for existing electricity
networkassetsprovidesablueprintforsustainableinvestmentsinthefuture.Inthis
context, risk-based maintenance regimes are intended to ensure higher efficiency
and ultimately establish a broader view on maintenance as a business function.
Fromthisresearch,wehavefoundthatelectricitynetworkorganisationswhostrive
towardswell-foundedmaintenancemanagementasabusinessfunctionwillneedto
have structured frameworks in order to find efficient and practical mixes of main-
tenance activities beyond the sole technical aspects of maintenance. It is recom-
mendedthatmaintenancedepartmentswillneedtofunctioninabroadersenseand
move away from “silos” thinking. This requires systematically adopting multidis-
ciplinary organisation domains into maintenance management and the continuous
measurement of the development and improvement of these dimensions by means
of maintenance maturity models and maintenance key performance indicators
(KPIs). Risk-based maintenance management is recommended and will need
structured comprehensive frameworks, analytical tools and technological methods
for developing and supporting maintenance management decisions.
Incurrentmaintenanceorganisations,weobserveshortcomingandgapsbetween
strategic,tacticalandoperationallevels.Inmanycases,notallorganisation-related
factors are thoroughly considered in the strategy for maintenance, which results in
anunclearsituationwhentranslatingthesefactorstomaintenanceconcepts,policies
and actions. In this research, an organisation-wide (multidisciplinary) maintenance
management structure has been introduced and evaluated in practice. In this
structure, the approach has been to add organisational aspects of influence, which
are not confined to technical factors only. Improvements will be steered from a
point of view which interacts with other non-technical, however, essential, aspects
of maintenance management, e.g. aspects such as, organisation and processes,
informationsystems and data requirements, portfolioplanning, compliancy, policy
Preface xi
and criteria. A Maintenance Management Maturity Model (M4) has been intro-
duced and practically implemented. Principally, the M4 is developed for assessing
and monitoring a set of multidisciplinary domains which are necessary for main-
tenance management professionalisation. With the aid of this model, the maturity
levels have been assessed in 2012 and 2014 for gas and electricity network assets.
Reviewingthesematuritylevelsmakesinsightfulwhichdomainshaveimprovedor
not. This approach enables continuous improvement for maintenance management
organisations on strategic levels.
Evaluating our goal of professionalising management of maintenance, we have
found that the adoption of systematic and methodical approaches, especially on
tacticallevel,isessential.Inthisresearch,astructuredandmethodicalmaintenance
management model has been established. This model is based on the well-known
reliability-centredmaintenance(RCM)methodwhichhasbeenexpandedtoinclude
and interrelate to the corporate risk management model and business values. The
establishedmodelprovidesamethodinwhichriskisaddedtothetraditionalRCM
method in order to cope with the consequences of functional asset failures on
multiplecorporatebusinessvalues.Oncesucharisk-relatedmaintenanceconceptis
introduced, any (existing or new) maintenance policy and maintenance action can
beassessedandexpressedonitsfinancial,technicalandotherbusinessvaluessuch
as safety, image and environmental consequences in terms of risks. This new
method we developed is named utility risk-linked RCM. The method has been
appliedtoacasestudyforpowertransformersandhasbeenfoundtobeapractical
and comprehensive method for utility risk-based maintenance management.
The utility risk-linked RCM encompasses a comprehensive integrated approach
for risk-based maintenance management. For practical robustness, we have inves-
tigated additional analysis methods and technological tools to support data-driven
decision-making.Statisticallifedataanalysis(LDA)hasbeenapplied,whichforms
amethodtodealwiththefailurebehaviourofassets,whichishighlystochastic.We
have found that failure data and in-service data of assets, when recorded, can be
processedtogiveusefulestimatesofstatisticalfailuredistributions.Thesestatistical
approaches are useful for the analysis of populations of assets providing informa-
tion on failure rates, probability offailures and age-based remaining life of (large)
populations. This is known as a top-down approach and forms an important link
between tactical and operational levels.
In the bottom-up approach, the upcoming role of condition monitoring tech-
nologies,whichhavebeenprovidedintermsofassetmanagementimplications,has
been described as well as the perception of utilities towards the adoption of these
technologies. We have observed that distribution network utilities are rather
reluctantregardinglarge-scaledeploymentofsuchtechnologies.Inmanycases,this
is due to high initial investment cost, data interpretation challenges, unclear
frameworks to relate condition data to strategic implications or the readiness and
reliability of the technology itself. However, in recent years, technologies have
developed and are becoming financially and technically more attractive.
Frameworksareneeded,ashasbeenfoundfrombenchmarksurveys,tounderstand
and interrelate the upcoming role of condition monitoring into the overall
